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It’s easy to picture Billy Idol spending the past few years in a VH1-sponsored bunker, watching the retro ’80s hit parade and thinking, “Why not me?”
“Devil’s Playground,” his first new album in 12 years, mixes serviceable punk-lite and not-bad garage rock (“Super Overdrive” could’ve been done by a watered-down version of the Raveonettes). Twenty years post-“Rebel Yell,” Idol, in all his glowering, nostril-flaring glory, now seems a model of authenticity. What’s most surprising is how little he sounds like himself these days; his voice is thinner, less growly–occasionally unrecognizable. Most of “Playground” is milder than you’d think, but not unpleasantly so.
